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Thomas Rhett and Lauren Akins are gearing up for another college football season, though the two passionate football fans lead a divided household. Rhett roots for the University of Georgia and Akins dons white and bright orange for the University of Tennessee.
Rhett and Akins spoke with Southern Living for the publication’s September 2023 cover, an issue celebrating the Spirit of Game Day (available online now) with recipes, stories and the competition and camaraderie that characterizes college football season. The issue is set to hit newsstands on Friday, August 18, per a press release issued on Tuesday (August 8), which also noted that Rhett and Akins will appear on Southern Livin’s Biscuits & Jam podcast with editor-in-chief Sid Evans on August 15. Southern Living shared details about Rhett and Akins' cover story on Tuesday.
“It’s no secret that our family is pretty much obsessed with football. Lauren and I had a lot of fun chatting with a magazine that appreciates the game as much as we do,” Rhett said in the release. His wife echoed: “Football was everything to my family growing up and Thomas Rhett and I have enjoyed passing our love of football down to our daughters. Southern Living celebrates family, traditions, and, of course, college football, so to be able to sit down with them was super special.”
Though Rhett and Akins are known for being a tight-knit couple — the childhood friends tied the knot in October 2022, and have since started a family with their four young daughters — they remain loyal to their respective teams.
“Once you walk onto that campus and you step foot in Neyland Stadium, there is not a feeling in the world like it. And Thomas Rhett will agree, even though he might not want to,” Akins said in the Southern Living cover story. She also remembered that “the first time I broke a bone, I was playing football. I can remember my dad doing drills with my sister and brother and me in the front yard…She was the big football fan in our family, and she’s really the one who instilled that in me.”
Rhett said of his Georgia Bulldogs: “When you have a whole stadium calling the Dawgs, a lot of people would say it’s funny that grown men and women are out there barking on a Saturday. But when you hear it all in unison, there’s something electric about that.
“We’ll get a fresh keg of ShinerBock, there’ll be TVs on all over the place, our girls will be running around, and the guys will be trying their best to watch the game in between changing diapers and feeding babies bottles,” Rhett said of football season. “That’s kind of what it looks like these days.”